Ad Hoc

It just struck me that this is the Friday before Easter, which makes it Good Friday (or “Happy Friday”, as my late brother called it).

It made me wonder whether Jesus originated the phrase, “Thank God it’s Friday!”

–Ken

In the scene in Atlas Shrugged where Jim Taggart was introduced, Ayn Rand wrote, “James Taggart seldom raised his head; when he looked at people, he did so by lifting his heavy eyelids and staring upward from under the expanse of his bald forehead.”

I was immediately reminded of that scene the other day, as I watched South Carolina’s Senator DeMint question Tim Geightner, Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury. Geightner appears to habitually hold a posture similar to Taggart’s. As he speaks, his head tilts down. He looks up from under his brow, with his forehead creased by multiple wrinkles. When a desk or podium is present, he tends to use it for support, bent forward and resting his elbows on it while making his hand gestures.

As an experiment, try assuming this posture Notice how you feel in this position. Do you feel confident, outgoing, optimistically eager to take on and solve problems? Or do you feel threatened, fearful, expecting to be disapproved of, or even attacked?

For examples (from different situations), see:

http://tinyurl.com/cacw5d

http://tinyurl.com/ak5gs5

http://tinyurl.com/8xwtdu

I have been too long away from the clinical psychology field to know what an expert at interpreting body language might say. And I only saw Geightner in this one admittedly uncomfortable situation — Sen. DeMint was asking him questions he was clearly unprepared for. I believe, though, that personality shows up in one’s habitual posture and approach to the world, and that Ayn Rand may have captured much of Geightner’s personality in her descriptions of Jim Taggart.
–Ken

Lately, I haven’t been able to turn on TV news without the talking heads therein telling me the country’s financial state is terrible because of deregulation. The Republicans, it is alleged or explicitly stated, deregulated the financial sector, and those greedy businessmen and bankers took full advantage. Now, the bottom has fallen out of the stock market and financial institutions are having to be bailed out by the government.

Then, what to my wondering screen should appear, but the following:

http://cei.org/articles/%E2%80%98hidden-tax%E2%80%99-rules-hits-economy

The heart of the matter:

“The Federal Register, which lists all new rules, ran to 72,090 pages in 2007. This was down 3.8% from 2006. The record year was 2004, which saw 75,676 pages.

“Out of more than 60 federal departments, a mere five accounted for 45% of new rules. The departments of Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, along with the EPA, instituted a combined 1,741 new rules in 2007.

“Some rules cost more than others and deserve special attention. Of the new rules, 159 are “economically significant,” meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. ”

So, it’s difficult for me to see just what has been “deregulated,” and how it’s caused all this financial destruction.

–Ken

Here we go again.

Sherry Jones, an American journalist, wrote a book entitled The Jewel of Medina. She got and advance of $100,000 from Random House, and the book was scheduled to come out in August of this year. It reportedly concerns the love story of Muhammed and his child bride.

A professor who was asked to read the book and perhaps provide a blurb for the cover, instead panned the book. Her derogation of the book as “softcore pornography” was leaked to the press.

The result was to cause Random House to withdraw. Jones responded, “That one of the biggest publishing houses in the world refuses to publish a book because of warnings is a sobering comment on the state of freedom of speech in the USA.” http://tinyurl.com/4b5osy

What Jones said is true; freedom of speech is eroding in this country. That is happening, not because of any conspiratorial suppression, but because of our government’s defaulting on its job of protecting this freedom.

The default, ongoing for years now, was highlighted when American publishers and book sellers were terrorized from publishing Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and the government did nothing. It’s hard to blame Random House for being scared off.

Sherry Jones was able to find another publisher, Gibson Square, an independent in Britain. The threats followed the book across the ocean. The home/office of this publisher, Martin Rynja, has been firebombed, lending credence to Random House’s fears. At least, the British authorities acted quickly and well, arresting the perpetrators and charging them with terrorism.

–Ken

Since I have nothing but scorn for religion, you can be sure that I abhor its recent creeping entry into government in the United States. I had intended to blog on this subject; however, Diana Hsieh is doing such a superlative job with the new Coalition for Secular Government that I can do no better than to direct anyone interested to:

http://www.seculargovernment.us/

An ongoing blog examines various relevant topics:

http://www.seculargovernment.us/blog/

Be sure to read the position paper by Diana and Ari Armstrong, linked in the URLs above.

–Ken

In a fit of pique, I submitted the following to the Republican Platform Committee. I don’t expect a great return for the effort, unless …many others express the same ideas as emphatically as they are able:

“My family has always voted Republican. The Party has changed in recent years.

“The important issue: the Republican Party must stand for strict separation of church and state.

“But the Party has now allied itself with the religious right, with such pet issues as anti-stem-cell research, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage.

“I will not vote Republican under such terms. Protection of individual rights is the most important political issue. Citizens have the right to indulge in their religion, but only privately. There is no right to force one’s religious views on others, as the religious right hopes to do through the Republican Party.

“My hope is for the Party to get back to issues of individual rights, national defense, and free markets. Leave the “social” issues to Americans’ free choice. Until then, the Party will not have my vote.”

–Ken

One Jan Helfeld interviewed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada). The interview can be seen here: http://tinyurl.com/5az366

Mr. Helfeld argues that the U.S. income tax is not voluntary, because it is backed up by the threat of governmental force. Reid insists that it is voluntary.

In trying to sort out Reid’s reasons, I find three arguments.

1) In many other countries you would never file taxes. Especially in European countries, your government makes the employer deduct all taxes before you get paid.

2) Here, we have lots of — oops; not loopholes — ways that people can get deductions, such as on mortgage payments, health, etc. Reid calls these, “incentives for people to do business.”

3 ) In resposnse to Helfeld’s assertion that there is force involved since if you don’t pay you go to jail, Reid responded, “You don’t go to jail. Some people go to jail…” but we have civil penalty alternatives.

When I come upon someone who uses words equivocally — as Sen. Reid does — and who does not change when this is pointed out to him, as Mr. Helfeld did several times, I consider that person to be either stupid or dishonest. I include Reid in the dishonest category.

Words have meanings. When pinned to the wall, Reid acknowledges that government force is used in tax collection by saying that “ultimately, you can’t cheat on your taxes.” So he (barely) recognizes what “voluntary” means. But immediately thereafter he continues to insist that our income tax system is voluntary because it’s different from those of some European countries.

The concept “voluntary” refers to the distinguishing characteristic of an action, in this case the action of handing over money. Throughout history, governments have forcibly taken wealth from those who produced it, and that’s what is called taxation, of course. It is the opposite of what’s meant by “voluntary”, which denotes action one takes willingly, of one’s own accord.
Now, it is taken as a truism that all politicians are dishonest. Usually, that means that they all make campaign promises that don’t subsequently get fulfilled. But Harry Reid’s dishonesty is more blatant. He wants to make us believe that words don’t have meanings, really, that they can mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. Thus, by destroying our language, do our leaders try to destroy our minds.

–Ken

Imagine having a paralyzing spinal cord injury. Imagine being unable to move your arms or legs, or even to breathe on your own. Then imagine that a physician has developed a treatment using injected embryonic stem cells which can actually improve your condition, allow you to, say, breathe again without mechanical aid. Or begin to regain some use of your limbs, and find yourself on the road to recovery.

Such treatment now appears to be on the horizon for sufferers of heretofore incurable conditions such as SCI, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease.

Every now and then, I run into a new candidate for the title, “a hero of mine.” It’s too early to tell, but I may have found another.

A medical researcher in New Delhi, India, Dr. Geeta Shroff, is reportedly doing wondrous things with embryonic stem cells. She has been called a “maverick,” already an attractive description in an age of regulated conformity. The reason for the appellation: her fierce determination to do her work under her own terms and in her own way.

This means that Dr. Shroff did her research without any government financial assistance. As with the early Bill Gates, she at first worked out of her garage, where she set up her own small lab.

She first became famous in the early 90’s for developing a technique for determining the sex of a fetus in the womb, without taking a scan. After regulators curtailed that practice, she worked at treating couples for infertility problems.

She began her controversial work on stem cells in the late 90’s. At present, she has two hospitals in New Delhi, where she treats people who have terminal conditions or incurable diseases. Her patients have mostly been countrymen, but lately she has been approached by many international patients from Britain, Australia, America, and other countries which tightly control the use of embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Shroff gets criticism from the conventional medical establishment because she doesn’t publish on her research and technique. Instead of publishing, she has applied for a patent in order to stop competitors from copying and profiting from her work.

Dr. Shroff is to be commended for steadfastly being her own person in an era when such independence is frowned upon. She will have huge forces aligned against her: the medical profession’s disapproval and consequent ostracism, condemnation by religious “pro life” groups, castigation by self-styled “ethicists”, censure for insisting on making her own use of her discoveries rather than giving them away — the list goes on.

It’s too early for me to tell whether this remarkable woman and her breakthrough methods are for real, or a flash in the pan, but I have to say, I like her style.
–Ken

A cynical curmudgeon named Ben Stein has been making the rounds of talk shows, promoting a soon-to-be-released movie.
(http://expelledthemovie.com/)

Judging from the trailer for the movie, it will be yet another rehash of Intelligent Design. The trailer shows a teacher at a chalkboard, talking to his class about evolution. Stein, at the rear of the class, interrupts to ask how life could arise from inanimate matter.

The teacher acts caught out. He mumbles and stutters. He says they have gone over this time and again. Stein responds that the teacher never answers the question. He brings up the possibility of ID, and the other students all nod approvingly.

Leave aside for the moment the fact that several hypotheses about the origin of life are presently being scientifically explored. (See, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/z2ylv.) Stein’s notion of ID demonstrates once again a fallacy that constantly shows up in ID claims. In fact, this fallacy has been pointed out so frequently that it has acquired a title: God of the Gaps.

Religion loves a mystery, meaning anything currently unexplainable. Theistic people can then “explain” the unknown by positing a god or gods who make it all happen.

An excellent article, “The Last Gasp for the God of the Gaps” by Greg Perkins is still available: (http://tinyurl.com/5ox38o)

When you already “know” — throughRevelaton — that God exists and created everything, you can safely ridicule any scientific teaching that contradicts your “knowledge.”

Stein, and ID proponents generally, already “know” how life got started; how the universe itself got started. God did it, and they “don’ need no steenking” scientific theories.

The focus of the ID movement is to ridicule the theory of evolution, which, they are correct in fearing, gives the lie to the notion of “creation ex nihilo.” The deeper purpose of ID is to more firmly embed religion into politics so that education and legislation will reflect the religionists’ views of the world and morality.

Of course, Stein’s movie is bent on deriding any idea of a universe with no God to make it go, so the focus (in the trailer) is the humiliation of the teacher who can’t answer it.

–Ken

Ad Hoc has been out of commission for awhile. While trying to categorize my former posts, I managed to lose a bunch of them. Server owner Prodos worked heroically to recover some (most?) of them from Google’s cache.

Prodos is also trying to find out what caused the loss in the first place. We have determined that it has something to do with CSS settings. Ad Hoc does not display properly in my browser. This apparently caused a misalignment of buttons and labels in the editiing page, so that when I hit “edit” I instead got “delete.”

In fact, I have two browsers and the blog does not look the way it should in either. I suspect some conflict with another program. I’ve been trying, sporadically, to be systematic in trying to track down which it might be.
In any case, Prodos found me a way to work around the problem while he applies his magnificent mind to its solution, so the blog is (sort of) back in business.

–Ken